Political Realities: To Get National Standards, Leaders Will Need to Be Bold

Gordon, Robert

Education Next, v6 n4 p56-59 Fall 2006

Politicians, less interested in purity than in popularity, are generally wary of national standards. Yet a standards-based accountability system is the core component of NCLB, and in some ways it has made standards advocates victims of their own success. Now, many activists are agitating to cut back the role of Washington in education, and a politician aiming to expand it with national standards could seem naive or stupid. However, some politicians have been able to take modest steps toward national standards without creating a firestorm. In this article, the author discusses the importance of good leadership in selling a new set of national standards, and describes how politicians on either the left or the right could gain support for federal standards by emphasizing the connection with other significant educational concerns embraced by their constituents: Republicans by linking standards to school choice, and Democrats by linking them to a greater commitment to funding the means to achieve them.